In honor of Prince’s birthday, here’s a previously unpublished photo that I took in 2011. If you don’t know me in real life, you probably don’t know that I am a massive Prince fan. I’ve been sort of down on Prince in recent years because I feel his beliefs in the Jehovah’s Witness cult religion are contrary to the reasons so many fans, including myself, fell in love with his music. But today, let’s not talk about that! Let’s talk about the fact that for nearly 30 years, he released at least one album per year, produced numerous side projects, toured the world performing different set lists nearly every night and sometimes played multiple shows in the same day.

The amount of unreleased music Prince has recorded is legendary (and from the hundreds of songs I’ve heard, they are as good if not better than a lot of the material he’s released) and I hope that both he and the world will celebrate them before it’s too late. I am not kidding you when I say that he has CAREERS worth of unreleased music. And not just music either. Books, videos, live concerts and miscellaneous projects have been created and have never seen the light of day for one reason or another and a tiny fraction of what is known to exist has leaked out in the form of bootlegs.

So much of this material is well documented in the die-hard fan community, and yet whenever a rock journalist nails the elusive artist down for an interview, they never ask him about this stuff or what the future plans for it are! We wanna know! Prince – let us into your world! We only know a little fraction of the ridiculous amount of creativity you possess. And if you’re only familiar with Prince’s hit songs, I urge you to dig a little deeper and check out his “deep album cuts” because there is so much funk that will kill ya!

Happy birthday Prince (even though you don’t celebrate them anymore) and may u live 2 c the dawn!